Dudes and dolls, I started kicking around the idea of taking the long weekend off from BoWilliams.com, and that quickly became the entire first week of July. I’m on a complete social media hiatus (Twitter too) from July 1 to July 7. I’ll be back with a post on Wednesday, July 8.

I need the break. I need the break from here, but I mostly need it from the way I get up and do and think about things day to day. This is shed as a subset.

There is no catastrophe. Everything is fine. The best way I know how to say it is that I’ve gradually—insidiously—lost too much of the narrative to suit me. I feel like I’ve woken up and I’m suddenly telling a different story from the one I wanted. You know the old party game Telephone?

I need a look from 10,000 feet. I need to speak the metalanguage, not the language, for a little while. I need to take a much more active interest in where I should be a motor, and where I should be a gear. I need to evict relativism from my self-assessment.

Relativism is one seductive bitch.

Thank you for reading BoWilliams.com. We’ll be back after these important messages.

Hey, want something to read in the meantime? Guess what? There are 2,811 posts at BoWilliams.com. Here are five random ones:

My dear friends Jennifer and Melissa, life partners since 1993, got engaged yesterday. I am so very happy for them and the many other couples who were similarly unencumbered with this ruling.

I’m also exhausted. Oh, not that I’ve been some kind of tireless activist. I’m just so weary of this being a thing. This has all been settled for me for literally decades—so settled that sometimes when I encounter continued angst over it, I’m caught off-guard.

If you are troubled by yesterday’s decision, please know that I understand that your position can be held by thinking, reasonable people. I know, because I know scores—perhaps hundreds—of said people. Please also know that if you’re interested in discussing rights and wrongs, then I will, but I’m not going to pick a fight with you, today or ever. And if I like you, love you, or both, your position on gay marriage has no bearing on that. I don’t agree with anyone in the world all the time, including myself.

What I will ask you to do is try very hard to take genuine stock of this.

If your objection is a Christian one, then what makes this hill worth dying on? Multiple Bible verses tell us that sin is sin. If homosexuality is one, it’s just another one. Shouldn’t we lead with God’s grace and loving our neighbor? Why must we also torture a piece of Leviticus or Romans and pretend it’s as important as anything Jesus said?

If your objection is a social one, then, sad to say, you just have a bit of bucking up to do. I’m dealing with a bit of the same thing. You know the gigantic gauged piercings that are in vogue right now? I find them grotesque. The very worst are the open rings. They just freak me right the hell out. You know what, though? I’m behind the societal curve on this. It’s my issue. I can learn to deal with it, or I can stay in my house and never come out. That’s life.

How big a deal is it? How big a deal is it really? Is it as important as feeding the poor? As being a person of your word? As doing your best to model good behavior for your children?

From a strictly political perspective, I think if the Republicans are smart about this ruling, then it’s a huge blessing. It should be a highly effective card to play. I mean, superseded, right? Gay marriage is the law of the land nationwide, so why even talk about it? Now that’s a bit of a cheat—I would have preferred an epiphany of substance—but I’ll take what I can get. I suspect S.E. Cupp will too.

I hope we’ll be able to look back on this day as the moment this narrative genuinely began settling.

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I remember being in the fourth grade and sitting in Mrs. Dillard’s room watching a film about the Holocaust. I remember seeing footage of repurposed agricultural equipment moving literal bucketloads of gassed Jews’ corpses around like dirt, filling huge mass graves with them. It was the first time I saw such vivid and graphic imagery […]

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